Veronica Treacy, acting head of pharmacy department, St James's Hospital, has the tricky job of balancing demand against resources
The pharmacy department in St James's Hospital is the State's largest.
We supply pharmacy services to inpatients of St James's Hospital and manage the pharmacy services for Our Lady's Hospice in Harold's Cross and St Luke's Hospital, Rathgar, Dublin. We also run a comprehensive outpatient HIV dispensing and medicine counselling service.
The department has more than 70 staff, including pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, administrative staff and a business manager. My job is to manage the pharmacy department and the services we provide.
It involves planning, problem-solving, risk management, overseeing the development of key pharmacy services within pharmacy, and managing the integration of such services into the delivery of care in the hospital as a whole. I have an excellent team who look after the day-to-day running of the department.
The services we provide include procuring and dispensing medicines.
Last year we purchased more than €20 million medication for our patients. We also have an extensive clinical pharmacy service in which we review patients' in-house prescriptions and educate patients about their medicines.
We clarify patients' medication histories on admission to hospital and liaise with the community pharmacists to ensure that patients have essential medicines upon discharge.
For unlicensed or high-tech drugs, the community pharmacy needs to have notice so that these drugs will be available.
Clinical pharmacists are also involved in specialist consultant ward rounds and providing drug information to our medical and nursing colleagues.
The pharmacist's advice and expertise is always close to hand for our patients, in that St James's is one of three Dublin hospitals which has an on-call pharmacy emergency supply service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
We review all chemotherapy prescriptions generated by haematology and oncology medical staff and advise patients regarding their medication.
The most challenging part of my job is to balance demand for service against available resources. I spend most of my working day meeting staff from across all disciplines, determining service needs and agreeing priorities with them.
I have a particular interest in risk management, and am delighted that a pharmacist has been appointed as the designated medication safety facilitator for St James's.
This appointment has enabled St James's to take a pro-active approach to patient safety. The aim is to expand awareness and knowledge of medication safety issues through the development of targeted training and educational initiatives for clinical staff.
On a voluntary basis, I am president of the Hospital Pharmacists Association of Ireland.
(Interview with Sylvia Thompson)